Of Magnets and Miracles
by Ivy Genesis
Summary: Compilation of one-shots for the Emotion Challenge on HPFC. Characters/pairings: Alicia Spinnet/Marcus Flint, Seamus Finnegan, Oliver Wood, Nymphadora Tonks, onesided!Remus Lupin/Lily Evans. Song title from Pink Floyd. Rated M to be safe.


**_What Is And What Should Never Be_**

 **Characters:** Alicia Spinnet (prompt), Marcus Flint  
 **Emotion:** Fury  
 **Scenario:** _Your character confronts someone about something they have done_. **  
Word Prompts:** secret, darkness, power  
 **Challenge:** The Emotion Challenge on HPFC  
 **Setting:** 1993/94, Hogwarts Library, mostly canon-compliant  
 **Other:** Title is a song by Led Zeppelin. I own nothing on this page but the plot, probably.

* * *

Alicia Spinnet was seeing red. If real life were a cartoon, her face would be reddening, steam would be pouring out of her ears, and her dark hair would be frizzing up like it would naturally if she hadn't been using Sleekeazy's hair potion on it regularly.

Now, Alicia liked to think of herself as a rather calm person. She was level-headed, kind, loyal, didn't much get into the habit of breaking rules. Really, she was more of a background person in the general scheme of things—she wasn't as loud as Angelina, or as funny as the Weasley twins, or as good at Quidditch tactics and strategies like Oliver Wood. She wasn't in the limelight like Harry, Ron, and Hermione, and to be honest, she was perfectly fine with that. Alicia was average, fun to hang out with when she was there but easy to forget when she wasn't.

Anyone would describe her strongest quality would be her care for others. It was only when she saw the stronger stepping on the weak that Alicia would wake up, snap up, and they'd get to see why she was in Gryffindor in the first place. Sure, Alicia was nice, Alicia was humble, Alicia was loyal, Alicia should have gone to Hufflepuff—but where a Hufflepuff might try to keep the peace, Alicia Spinnet would rather go in wand and words blazing to defend whoever needed defending.

And so it was that fateful evening that Alicia was, figuratively speaking, seeing red. She had just spied a certain Marcus Flint skulking around the library. It only took a few seconds for her mind's eye to flash to him and three others standing in the middle of the pitch yesterday, garbed up in robes that didn't look unlike Dementors' in an attempt to distract Harry to the point of falling off his broom and losing the match. She remembered hearing McGonagall's enraged shouts at the Slytherins, and she remembered how very badly she had been itching to throw a hex at the boys. Once the thought re-entered her mind, it was like her body began moving of her own accord.

Her blood was pumping, rushing through her veins, and she could feel her cheeks start to heat up. Her steps were hard on the the library floor, her fingers tightly clenching the heavy tome she had previously been browsing through. Her jaw was set in a hard line, her normally-bright eyes practically throwing sparks in her rage. It took only a few stomps and then she was beside Marcus Flint, and without so much as a word of warning, she swung the heavy tome like a Beater's bat and thwacked Flint on the arm.

"How could you _do_ something like that?" Her whisper was a furious hiss—nice, kind, humble Alicia didn't want to disturb anyone else studying in the library—and she was practically spitting like a cat, glaring with every ounce of her anger at the Slytherin Captain. It was a testament to her rage that Flint actually backed away from her slightly, a scowl on his face as he lifted a hand to massage the arm she'd attacked. "He is just a _kid_ , he's _five_ years younger than you, how _could_ you—and not just you! You dragged others into your _foul_ , _messed up_ little plot, you—"

As Alicia ranted, Flint recovered from her attack and began to just smirk at her, and the lack of response from him irked Alicia to the point of madness. There he was, just standing there, leering at her, as if her anger had no effect on him. She was _this_ close to pulling out her wand to show him just what she was capable of doing, when Flint finally spoke, his voice teasing and careless: "Breathe, Spinnet, if you faint it might look like I attacked first."

It felt like a slap to Alicia's face, him disregarding her like that. There she was, standing up for something she believed in, defending people she cared about, and it was nothing to him. It hurt more than she would ever admit, especially to someone like Flint.

But she had thought something had started to grow between them, in between the little sighs and moans and secret, stolen moments in broom cupboards. It'd been going on for months now, starting from one of the earlier times Alicia had defended someone against him. Flint had even failed his end of year exams just so he could repeat one more year; he'd said he hadn't had enough of tormenting her, but she'd always thought/denied that he'd done it to stay with her because he'd started to have feelings for her.

Alicia Spinnet could be a fighter when it came to defending the weak, but truly she was a hopeless romantic at heart. It was just her luck that the boy she thought she'd fallen in love with was a boy who did not care about her, only using her to assert his power over her. But she couldn't, _wouldn't_ , take this any more. Many times, she'd fought with him about his bullying ways, but this was the last straw. There was no future with them—there never really was, she'd just been too busy denying it, hoping that Flint would change for her.

The fireworks in her blood flickered and sputtered as though swamped over with a tidal wave of acceptance. But the fury in her body and the tingling in her fingertips were still itching to swing a fist in Flint's face, wanting one final hit at the boy who stole her heart and bullied children. Fast as a whip, her wand was out and Flint was on the ground, stiff as a board, his face registering the beginning of a shocked expression. In a hushed voice that managed to sound furious yet also dead, she hissed at him, "Don't talk to me, ever again."

Glaring into the eyes that had once meant the world to her, Alicia Spinnet turned on her heel and walked away, leaving Flint in the darkness of the bookshelves at the back of the library, and throwing her memories of him in the darkness at the back of her mind.

.

.

.


End file.
